La cremolata di borlotti la fece far cremosa
Vide infra
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From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of phatic
Sent: Tuesday, May 2, 2017 6:30 PM
To: Lit Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [lit-ideas] Going on (or Not) (was: Palma's intolerable sufferings and
other tropics)
Dear Sirs (and potentialy Madams),
A professor of philosophy who want to close down the humanities? Is that a not
very charming attempt at provocation (in the vein of the once celebrated
coloumnist in the Durban-based morning paper Mercury who went by the name of
_Agent Provocateur_)?
If it is so that Monseiur Palma is opposed to Humanities as Science in
particular he would be well informed to know that the head of the School of
Post-Graduate Studies at the University of kwaZulu/Natal some years ago,
Professor Johan Jacobs, was a staunch champion of precisely this concept. As a
representative of a younger generation Palma places himself -- as would be
expected -- in opposition to Jacobs'. Cute.
When it comes to various left-leaning academics' random views on political
matters in a country where they were neither born nor have any present
residence, should we not compare this to Palma's great un-akcnowledged
philosophic mentor's random views on an ethnic group to which he himself didn't
belong? The idea of establishing an egalitarian polity without religion is
otherwise hardly new in the political circles where Palma, Chomsky and their
freidns move.
Lastly, when it comes to science an its economy, Bernard Maris, who was
murdered in the attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo,
proposed that Michel Houellebecq is a far more intelligent speaker on these
matters than any disciplined economist every were (perhaps with the exception
of Keynes). The day of Maris' murder, Charlie Hebdo had a drawing of precisely
Houellebecq on its cover. And matters aren't made any less curious by the fact
that Houellebecq's recent _Soumission_ was released on the exact day of the
attack.
Be that as it May (successfully divorsed from Europe or Not), Maris -- himself
educated as economist -- claims his discipline to be "not only a vague
ideology, but a precise, evil, damaging ideology that is even worse that
religions were." Ideology today doesn't belong either to the left or the right:
it belongs to the economists, which is to say economic neo-liberalism, and if
it is one thing Houellebecq closes his mind to it is liberalism -- an ideology
of free individuals where everybody fights everybody else, where there is no
society, no community. No love. No benevolence.
Maris: "There is no economic science; what exists is the suffering that is
hidden behind the supply, the demand, in other words the poetry and compassion
that is persistently trampled down by the iron heel of the market."
Yrs,
--
-- If thinking is what distinguishes man's nature, then surely the essence of
this nature, namely the nature of thinking, can be seen only by looking away
from thinking. (Martin Heidegger) --
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